What is Individualism?

Carolina and Vidhya reflect on individualism and interrogate how it shows up in our personal lives and is built into our work—including NPIC and evaluation’s training, practice, and literature as well as existing field-building and change efforts.

⁠⁠Episode 1.7 TRANSCRIPT

Notes

• 02:17 “Utopia” asperceived or portrayed by dominating forces
• 11:55 Concentric circles still center the individual and nuclear family, unlike the more web-like nature of many kinship structures around the world, including South Asia and West Africa.
• 21:45 Others may counter that democratic governance structures had existed among peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Asia before the European Enlightenment. See more⁠here⁠.
• 29:22 The programs that Roosevelt and Johnson instituted were systematically eroded throughout the 1980s as “personal responsibility” replaced “rugged individualism.” See morehere.
• 38:36 The setup is that colonial and capitalist destruction of our lands, economies, and social structures leads us to seek opportunities to fulfill our dreams—or simply survive—elsewhere. See morehere.
• 41:37 The artist did not want to ruin her child’s innocence—it was an act of resistance and demonstration of sovereignty to have her child grow up in a way that was not defined by colonization and racism. See morehere.

Resources

• The Origins of “Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps”
• The Dust Bowl
• Huck's Ironic Circle
• Individualism and Opposition to Redistribution in the US
• There’s No Such Thing as a “Self-Made Man”
• Bootstrapped
• The Role of Complexity Studies in the Emerging “Processual” Worldview
• A Processual Approach to Political Violence
• Time and Process
• Historical Determinism Revisited
• Social, Political and Cultural Dimensions of Health
• Understanding the Connection Between Political and Social Determinants of Health
• Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory
• Systems Thinking and Race
• Kinship